The Gemini Contenders: A Novel Read online

  “He’s dead,” said Latham quietly at the brigadier’s side.

  “I know that,” answered Teague curtly. “I want to know how long he’s been dead.”

  “Who is he?” asked Latham, looking down at the dead man. The body had been stripped; only the undershorts and shoes remained. There was a single, clean gunshot wound in the upper center of the naked chest; the rivulet of blood had dried.

  “Colonel Aubrey Birch. Officer of the vaults.” Teague turned and spoke to the two guards holding the door. A third soldier had gone for the MI6 house surgeon on the second floor. “Put that door back. Admit no one. Say nothing. Come with me, Latham.”

  They rode the elevator to the cellars. Latham saw that Teague was not only in a state of shock, he was frightened.

  “What do you think happened, sir?”

  “I gave him his separation papers two nights ago. He hated me for it.”

  Latham was silent for a moment. Then he spoke without looking at Teague, his eyes straight ahead. “I’m a civilian, so I’ll say it. That was a rotten, goddamned thing to do. Stone was once the best man you had.”

  “Your objection is noted,” said the brigadier. coldly. “You were the one they called Pear, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Teague glanced at the discharged Intelligence agent; the panel light indicated that the cellars had been reached. “Well, the apple soured, Mr. Pear. It became rancid. What concerns me now is how far the rot penetrated.”

  The door opened. They walked out of the elevator and turned right toward a wall of steel that closed off the corridor. In the center of the wall was a thick steel door, its frame was barely discernible. There was a plate of bullet-proof glass in the upper section, a black button to the left, a thin rubber slot below, a metal sign above.

  SECURITY AREA

  No Admittance Without Proper Authorisation

  Ring Bell—Place Authorisation In Vacuum Slot

  Teague approached the glass, pushed the button and spoke firmly. “Code Hyacinth. No delays, please; make visual confirmation. This is Brigadier Teague. I’m accompanied by one Mr. Harold Latham, cleared by me.”

  There was a whirring sound. The steel door receded, then was slid manually to the side. An officer on the other side saluted.

  “Good afternoon, general. There’s been no Hyacinth report down here.”

  Teague acknowledged the salute with a nod of his head. “I’m delivering it myself, major. Nothing is to be removed until further orders. What does the duty ledger read on Colonel Birch?”

  The officer turned to a metal desk that was attached to the metal wall. “Here it is, sir,” he said, holding open a black leather notebook. “Colonel Birch signed out the night before last at nineteen hundred hours. He’s due back in the morning. Oh seven hundred, sir.”

  “I see. Was anyone with him?”

  The major looked again at the large notebook. “Yes, sir. Captain Stone, sir. His checkout time is the same.”

  “Thank you. Mr. Latham and I will be in Vault Seven. May I have the keys, please? And the combination figures.”

  “Of course.”

  Inside the metal room were twenty-two file cabinets. Teague stopped at the fourth cabinet against the far wall opposite the door. He looked at the page of figures in his hand and began manipulating the combination lock in the upper right corner of the cabinet. As he did so, he held out the page of figures for Latham.

  “Save time,” he said brusquely, his voice hoarse. “Locate the cabinet with the Brevourt file. B-r-e-v-o-u-r-t. Extract it.”

  Latham took the paper, returned to the left wall and found the cabinet.

  The lock sprung. Teague reached over and pulled out the second cabinet drawer. Rapidly his fingers separated the files.

  Then he separated them again. Slowly, allowing for no oversight.

  It wasn’t there. The file on Victor Fontine was gone.

  Teague closed the cabinet drawer and stood erect. He looked over at Latham, who knelt by the bottom drawer of his cabinet, an open folder in his hand. He was staring at it, his expression one of stunned bewilderment.

  “I asked you to find it, not to read it,” said the brigadier icily.

  “There’s nothing to read,” replied Latham quietly, removing a single page of paper from the folder. “Except this.… What the hell have you bastards done?”

  The paper was a photostat. It had a black border, with room at the bottom for two seals of approval. Both men knew exactly what it was.

  An order for execution. An official license to kill.

  “Who’s the target?” asked Teague in a monotone, remaining by the cabinet.

  “Vittorio Fontini-Cristi.”

  “Who approved of it?”

  “Foreign Office seal, Brevourt’s signature.”

  “Who else? There must be two!”

  “The prime minister.”

  “And Captain Stone is the assignee—”

  Latham nodded, although Teague had not asked a question. “Yes.”

  Teague breathed deeply, closing his eyes for a moment. He opened them and spoke. “How well did you know Stone? His methods?”

  “We worked together for eighteen months. We were like brothers.”

  “Brothers? Then I remind you, Mr. Latham, that in spite of your separation from the service, the Official Secrets Act still binds you.”

  15

  Teague spoke into the telephone, his phrases precise, his voice cutting. “From the beginning he was your man. From the day we placed him in Loch Torridon. His interrogations, the endless questions, Lübok’s name in our files, the traps. Fontine’s every move was reported to you.”

  “I make no apologies,” said Anthony Brevourt on the other end of the line. “For reasons you well know. ‘Salonika’ was, and still remains, a highest priority of the Foreign Office.”

  “I want an explanation for that order of execution! It was never cleared, never reported—”

  “Nor was it meant to be,” interrupted Brevourt. “That order was our backup. You may subscribe to your own immortality, brigadier, but we don’t. Air raids aside, you’re a strategist for covert operations; a potential mark for assassination. If you were killed, that order permitted Stone immediate access to Fontini-Cristi’s whereabouts.”

  “Stone convinced you of that?”

  There was a pause before the ambassador replied. “Yes. Several years ago.”

  “Did Stone also tell you he hated Fontine?”

  “He didn’t approve of him; he wasn’t alone.”

  “I said hated! Bordering on the pathological.”

  “If you knew that, why didn’t you replace him?”

  “Because, damn it, he controlled it! As long as he had a reason to. He has none now.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “You’re a goddamn fool, Brevourt! Stone left us a photostat; he kept the original. You’re helpless and he wants you to know it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s walking around with an official document that gives him a warrant to kill Fontine. Countermanding it now is meaningless. It would have been meaningless two years ago! He has the paper; he’s a professional. He intends to carry out the assignment and place that document where you can’t get it. Can the British government—can you, or the foreign secretary, or Churchill, himself, justify that execution? Would any of you care to even comment on it?”

  Brevourt replied swiftly, urgently. “It was a contingency. That was all it was.”

  “It was the best,” agreed Teague harshly. “Startling enough to cut through red tape. Sufficiently dramatic to break down bureaucratic walls. I can hear Stone mounting his argument.”

  “Stone must be found. He must be stopped.” Brevourt’s breathing could be heard over the line.

  “We’ve reached one area of agreement,” said the brigadier wearily.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “To begin with, tell Fontine everything.”
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br />   “Is that wise?”

  “It’s fair.”

  “We expect to be kept informed. If need be, hourly.”

  Teague looked absently across the office at his wall clock. It was nine forty-five; moonlight streamed through the windows, no curtains blocked it now. “I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “What?”

  “You’re concerned with a vault taken out of Greece five years ago. I’m concerned with the lives of Victor Fontine and his family.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” said Brevourt, drawing out his words, “that the two are inseparable?”

  “Your conjecture is noted.” Teague hung up and leaned back in his chair. He would have to call Fontine now. Warn him.

  There was a knock on his door,

  “Come in.”

  Harold Latham walked in first, followed by one of the best investigating officers in MI6. A middle-aged, former Scotland Yard forensic specialist. He carried a manila file folder in his hand.

  A few weeks ago, Pear would not have walked into Teague’s office smoking a cigarette. He did so now; it was important to him. Yet, thought Teague, Latham’s hostility had lessened. Pear was first and foremost a professional. Civilian status would not change that.

  “Did you find anything?” asked Teague.

  “Scratchings,” said Latham. “They may mean something, they may not. Your man here is sharp. He can lift a book off a pinhead.”

  “He knew where to point me,” added the analyst. “He was familiar with the subject’s habits.”

  “What have we got?”

  “Nothing on the premises; his office was clean. Nothing but case work, dossiers marked for the ovens, all quite legitimate. His flat was something else. He was a thorough chap. But the arrangements of the hangers in the closets, the clothes in his bureau, the toilet supplies … they all indicate that Stone had been planning his departure for some time.”

  “I see. And these scratchings?”

  Pear answered. The professional in him needed recognition. “Stone had a disagreeable habit. He would lie in bed making notes. Words, brackets, figures, arrows, names—doodling, I call it. But before he turned in he’d tear off the pages and burn them. We found a writing pad on the shelf of the bedside table. There was nothing on it, of course, but the Yarder here knew what to do.”

  “There were depressions, sir. It wasn’t difficult; we lifted them under spectrograph.” The officer handed Teague the folder across the desk. “Here are the results.”

  Teague opened the folder and stared at the spectrogram. As Pear had described, there were numbers, brackets, arrows, words. It was a disjointed puzzle, a wild diagram of incoherent meanderings.

  And then the name leaped up from the mass of incoherence.

  Donatti.

  The man with the streak of white in his hair. The executioner of Campo di Fiori. One of the most powerful cardinals in the Curia.

  “Salonika” had begun.

  “… Guillamo Donatti.”

  Fontine heard the name and it triggered the memory locked in his mind. The name was the key, the lock was sprung, and the memory revealed.

  He was a child, no more than nine or ten years old. It was evening and his brothers were upstairs preparing for bed. He had come down in his pajamas to find a book, when he’d heard the shouting from his father’s study.

  The door was open, no more than a foot, and the curious child had approached it. What he saw inside so shocked his sensibilities that he stood there hypnotized. A priest was in front of his father’s desk, roaring at Savarone, pounding the top of the desk with his fist, his face pinched in anger, his eyes wide in fury.

  That anyone could behave this way in his father’s presence, even—perhaps especially—a priest, so startled the child that he involuntarily, audibly gasped.

  When he did the priest whipped around, the burning eyes looking at the child, and it was then that Victor had seen the streak of white in the black hair. He had run away from the living room and up the staircase.

  The next morning Savarone had taken his son aside and explained; his father never left explanations suspended. What the violent argument referred to was obscured with time, but Fontine recalled that his father had identified the priest as Guillamo Donatti, a man who was a disgrace to the Vatican … someone who issued edicts to the uninformed and enforced them by fear. They were words a child remembered.

  Guillamo Donatti, firebrand of the Curia.

  “Stone’s after his own, now,” said Teague over the line from London, bringing Victor’s focus back to the present. “He wants you, and whatever price you’ll bring. We were looking in the wrong areas; we’ve traced him now. He used Birch’s papers and got a military flight out of Lakenheath. To Rome.”

  “To the cardinal,” corrected Fontine. “He’s not taking chances with long-distance negotiations.”

  “Precisely. He’ll come back for you. We’ll be waiting.”

  “No,” said Victor into the telephone. “That’s not the way. We won’t wait, we’ll go after them.”

  “Oh?” The doubt was in Teague’s voice.

  “We know Stone’s in Rome. He’ll stay out of sight, probably with informer cells; they’re used to hiding men.”

  “Or with Donatti.”

  “That’s doubtful. He’ll insist on neutral territory. Donatti’s dangerous, unpredictable. Stone realizes that.”

  “I don’t care what you’re thinking, but I can’t—”

  “Can you circulate a rumor from reliable sources?” interrupted Fontine.

  “What kind of rumor?”

  “That I’m about to do what everyone expects me to do: return to Campo di Fiori. For unknown reasons of my own.”

  “Absolutely not! It’s out of the question!”

  “For God’s sake,” shouted Victor. “I can’t hide out for the rest of my life! I can’t live in fear that each time my wife or my children leave the house there is a Stone or a Donatti or an execution team waiting for them! You promised me a confrontation. I want it now.”

  There was silence on the line from London. Finally Teague spoke. “There’s still the Order of Xenope.”

  “One step leads to another. Hasn’t that been your premise all along? Xenope will be forced to acknowledge what is, not what it thinks should be. Donatti and Stone will be proof. There can be no other conclusion.”

  “We have men in Rome, not many—”

  “We don’t want many. Very few. My being in Italy must not be linked with M.I.-Six. The cover will be the Court of Reparations. The government wants to control our factories, the properties. The court bids higher every week; they don’t want the Americans.”

  “Court of Reparations,” said Teague, obviously writing a note.

  “There is an old man named Barzini,” continued Fontine. “Guido Barzini. He used to be at Campo di Fiori, he tended the stables. He could give us background. Put a trace on him in the Milan district. If he’s alive, he’ll be found through the partigiani.”

  “Barzini, Guido,” repeated Teague. “I’ll want safety factors.”

  “So do I, but very low profile, Alec. We want to force them out in the open, not further underground.”

  “Assuming the bait’s taken, what will you do?”

  “Make them listen. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I don’t think it is,” said Teague.

  “Then I’ll kill them,” said Victor.

  The word went out. The padrone was alive; he had returned. In a small hotel several blocks from the Duomo, he was seen. Fontini-Cristi was in Milan. The news was known even in Rome.

  There was a knock on the hotel door. Barzini. It was a moment Victor both looked forward to and dreaded. The memories of white light and death inadvertently came into focus. He suppressed them as he walked across the room to the door.

  The old farmhand stood in the hallway, his once muscular body now bent and thin, lost within the coarse fabric of his cheap black coat. His face was wrinkled; the eyes w
ere rheumy. The hands that had held Victor’s writhing, lashing body to the earth, the fingers that had clawed at his face and saved his life, were withered, gnarled. And they shook.

  To Fontine’s sorrow and embarrassment, Barzini fell to his knees, his thin arms outstretched, grasping Victor’s legs.

  “It’s true. You’re alive!”

  Fontine pulled him to his feet and embraced him. In silence he led the old man into the room, to the couch. Beyond his age, it was obvious that Barzini was ill. Victor offered food; Barzini asked for tea and brandy. Both were brought quickly by the hotel waiters, and when both were finished, Fontine learned the salient facts of Campo di Fiori since the night of the massacre.

  For months after the German killings, the fascist troops kept the estate under guard. The servants were allowed to take their possessions and leave; the maid who had witnessed the shooting was murdered that night. No one was permitted to live in Campo di Fiori except Barzini, who was obviously mentally deficient.

  “It was not difficult. The fascisti always thought everyone else was crazy but themselves. It was the only way they could think, and face themselves in the morning.”

  In his position of stablehand and groundkeeper, Guido was able to watch the activity at Campo di Fiori. Most startling were the priests. Groups of priests were permitted in; never more than three or four at a time, but there were many such groups. At first Guido believed they had been sent by the holy father to pray for the souls of the house of Fontini-Cristi. But priests on sacred missions did not behave as these priests behaved. They went through the main house, then the cottages and, finally, the stables, searching with precision. They tagged everything; furniture was pried apart; walls tapped for hollow sections and panels removed; floors ripped up—not in anger but as experienced carpenters might do; lifted and replaced. And the grounds were combed as though they were fields of gold.

  “I asked several of the young fathers what they were looking for. I don’t think they really knew. They always replied, ‘thick boxes, old man. Cartons of steel and iron.’ And then I realized that there was one priest, an older priest, who came every day. He was forever checking the work of the others.”

  “A man in his sixties,” said Victor softly, “with a streak of white in his hair.”